Wednesday, November 26, 2008

As predicted, we haven’t seen a movie as a couple since the blessed event. The G took advantage of my boundless generosity to escape to the district Monday night and partake in some sexy teen vampire time for girls and their moms and their weird neighbors. The G played the role of weird neighbor.

Relief is on the way. Grandmas are going to be aplenty this weekend and the question is not which movies to we want to see but how many? Actually, that’s not right, since my bride only wanted to see Twilight and that itch has been scratched. I’ve been watching commercial extra closely to see what are options are. They seem limited. And I don’t even know if these are even in the theaters anymore. Or if they’ve even opened. As far as I can tell, these are our choices:

1. The one where Paul Rudd beats children

2. James Bond. I’ve read one review and it said it was good. But when I tried to argue another point of the reviewer’s blog post it was rejected. In other words, TOM LEE IS A CENSOR.

3. Keanu Reeves remakes one of my favorite movies and probably ruins it. I was intrigued by the ads but they raise a question: when did it become standard science fiction policy that aliens/robots are incapable of using contractions? Data couldn’t do it. It appears that Keanu can’t do it in this movie. Why would an off-worlder bother to learn only 99% of our language?

Friday, November 21, 2008

I was an actual member of an actual wedding party last weekend although my only responsibility was to escort old ladies to their seats. I pwned those grandmas too and not a single one wandered off or sat in the wrong seat. And when one casually teased my sister, I put her in her place with the gentle ease of a down comforter.

OK. It wasn’t really an insult. The D walked by in heals and grandma said -

“You sure couldn’t eat soup off that girls head.”

You sure can’t, grandma. Because I’m not really sure what you’re talking about.

But before any of that went down, we in the groom’s party did our damndest to force the wedding planner into a psychotic meltdown. We arrived two hours early for several rounds of photos but only managed to get in the way of the caterers, staff and other hangers-on. We were ushered from room to room in an effort to keep form being under foot and ended up in the library of the mansion where the wedding was being staged. It was also where the beer was being hidden.

So we started to get drunk.

The library was of high shelves made of dark wood. The room was very dark. One of groomsmen turned to me and asked “What does the room remind you of?” I spent a few seconds scrolling through my memory banks, looking for an instance when we’d been in a similar library. Coming up blank, he bellowed “Atonement!” Without warning he pushed another groomsman up against the wall and began dry humping him furiously.

The windows started shaking. Books began to fall off the shelves. The molested groomsman (unfamiliar with the movie) rolled with it. The wedding planner walked in and all hell broke loose. I’ve never seen an angrier woman.

They took our beer away and banished us to the basement until moments before the wedding started. But the jokes on her, because she was so angry she didn’t cue the groom to approach the alter until the bride had already gotten down the aisle. I almost ruined the whole day!

I’m actively going out of my way to know and learn nothing about the Twilight. I refuse to participate in any public discussion on the matter. There are probably reasons to like it. There are probably more reasons to mock it. It seems that most people like to hate on it. I know that the G read one of the books. And she told me some of the basics about it.

She’s like “So there’s this pale girl and some more pale vampire and a werewolf maybe and they have some forbidden love. And then one the vampires…” But I stopped her before she could add further details.

I must remind the world that I was aggressively mocked for taking the day off to see both Underworld and Underworld 2: The Werewolf KooKajoo. In fact, the abuse was so intense the G had to use up a sick day from her job as a Sotheby’s auctioneer because her voice was raspy and dry. And yet, the plots between these two films (and the Kate Beckinsale-less Underworld prequel coming out soon) and Twilight sound exactly the same.

You can all go to hell.

Anyway, the commercials make the movie look like a huge sack of crap. And I ought to know since my exposure to huge sacks of crap has increased 100 fold over the last 2 months. And I don’t also don’t understand how NPR allowed it to be the underwriter of some of their segments. But I'm not paying attention to any of that.

So have fun this weekend, jerks, seeing your teenage vampire movie that I don't know anything about except Kate Beckinsale is not having sex in it.

Thursday, November 13, 2008

- our internet has been massively fucked and was finally fixed yesterday by, I swear to god, Rodney King. Rodney King now works for Comcast, fyi.

- I'm not at work nor do I leave the house often/at all. Seriously, can we briefly touch on mommyblogging, which is a bigger mystery to me now than ever ever ever before? As much as I love my offspring with all my soul, shit be boring. I am fairly certain you do not want to hear about TLC's daytime television programming (mind-numbingly terrible) or trips to Target (brief) or on average what time the mailman shows up at my house (later than you'd imagine!) or who the Spawn takes after (me, most definitely. He is blond, pretty curmudgeonly, has already outgrown clothing meant for humans months and months older than him, and only my husband can make him smile. It's like a goddamn mirror.) Also: I have rewatched all seasons of Veronica Mars. Man, those first two were good. Oh but look, I just told you all about that stuff anyway!

Tuesday, November 11, 2008

Do you ever stop and consider how much you have in common with Henry Paulson? For instance, the Treasury Secretary and I are both Eagle Scouts. We attended Ivy League colleges as undergrads, were both members of Phi Beta Kappa and got our Master’s degree at Harvard business school. I’m also rich, completely bald and became the CEO of an international bank holding company in my 40s. And I put my signature on every dollar bill in my wallet.

But we are also very different. He’s a Christian Scientist. I’m Presbyterian. When he dislocates a finger he doesn’t go to the hospital to have it put back.

Tuesday, November 04, 2008

We are not really comfortable touching on politics around here. We both get annoyed when the robots call during dinner and we both voted toady. But I seemed to be the only one who got upset when they let that pregnant lady cut in line at the polls. Bah! I waited an hour and 20 minutes! It’s not like she’s voting for two.

But we are comfortable talking about sci-fi around here, though. And there’ve been some intersections of late.

----------

I won’t embed someone else’s video but I did watch the “Vote Lando for President” bit on Funny or Die. Verdict: meh. But who knew Calrissian loved himself so much turquoise jewelery and giant rings? And I understand why these fake campaign ads would place him outside Cloud City or that one planet from the first one. But why is he in the Metro for the second one?

I guess Federal Triangle does have that lived-in retrofuturism look that Lucas craves. And the thought of a giant fireball shooting down the tunnel isn’t that hard to imagine. Especially if there are wet leaves on the tracks, which is apparently the most deadly thing that can befall the entire Metro system.

------------

Whenever someone is questioned about the effect race will have on the election they will either a) tell the truth or b) cover up their anxiety by giving a gradually absurd list of skin colors that don’t bother them. It usually goes “I don’t care if they are black, white, yellow, purple, whatever. I’m not racist.”

I have a problem with this. Purple skinned people are the worst. And Purple Man was just about the most awful President we’ll ever have. He had Peter Parker and Matt Murdoch executed. Then he shot Captain America in the head before sending him 400 years into the past. And then he did worse things.

Bottom line – purples are the only group it’s okay to be racist against.

----------

Oh, Liddy. What did you do your face in fours years since we last heard from you?

What did I do to your face? Someone's seriously needs to take photoshop off this computer.

Monday, November 03, 2008

Last week, Amanda dreamt that a hundred internet weirdoes descended on a small turkey farm in rural Maryland and wreaked havoc with impractical shoes and fruit cannons.

A sign indicated there were 15,000 turkeys in there. 15,000 filthy, disgusting turkeys.

On Saturday, we tried to make her hallucination a reality. Unfortunately for her, our car showed up an hour early, didn’t get lost and made all the farmers sigh with our adorableness. The people who did end up making to Thurmont showed up hours later and missed all my inspiring feats. It wasn’t what she had in mind, exactly, but it did sate her appetite for mayhem for at least a week or two.

Winter Brook Farm has two things going for it. First, there’s the corn maze. Corn mazes are cloyingly sentimental holdovers from a bygone time when the thought of getting lost in a field was terrifying for your parents. And I have to admit that when you’re a few hundred yards in and there’s nothing but silence and cornstalk rustling it can be a bit spooky. But then you remember you can just Kool-Aid Man your way out of there because it’s only a field of corn. Sort fun, I guess.

The real draws to Winter Brook Farm are the two modified tractor/bulldozer/howitzers that shoot pumpkins and apples hundreds of yards with unpredictably explosive results. I’ve shot belt fed M60s at old Jeep carcasses doused in gasoline that caused giant scorching fire balls after a single round. This was better.

The double barreled apple cannon blew stuff up real good, especially if knocking over bleach bottles is your thing. But for my money, I wanted to inflict more damage than your average middle school bully with a sack of rotten produce.

You could actually feel the pumpkins impact when they exploded on the boat or car or lawnmower. It was even impressive when Amanda missed the target 20 feet high and her pumpkin came to rest a quarter mile later. I think she got and extra 30 yards off a cart bounce but it was a remarkable shot none the less.

I’m not saying that I’m the greatest pumpkin cannon shot ever but I did take out 55 gallon drum from 75 yards away. If only there was a way to use these powers for good.